A new CSIRO platform offers access to data for developing applications to verify fibre and food traceability.

Dr Nina Welti says isotopes are useful for many purposes. Comparing isotope ratios, such as carbon and nitrogen, can reflect processes including photosynthesis and leaf decomposition, and water movement, evaporation and storage.

Consumer demand for fibre and food traceability, along with stricter regulatory requirements in many countries – has led to increasing interest in traceability.

AgriFutures evokeAG. 2025 Strategic Partner, CSIRO, and three collaborators have developed an innovative platform to support new verification tools by making public Australian data more accessible and easier to use.

Launched during evokeAG., the groundbreaking platform, Isotopes.au, combines and shares data on stable isotopes, which are non-radioactive forms of atoms that do not decay into other elements.

Isotopes: Natural signatures for verifying food traceability

CSIRO trusted supply chains expert Dr Nina Welti said isotopes are useful for many purposes.

As naturally occurring unique chemical signatures found in soil, plants and water, they can provide valuable information about a product’s origin and production methods

Comparing isotope ratios, such as carbon and nitrogen, can reflect processes including photosynthesis and leaf decomposition, and water movement, evaporation and storage.

“All of these processes will discriminate or have a preference to heavier or lighter isotopes,” Nina said.

“We use these differences to understand the ecosystem and the environment.”

Isotopes can indicate geographic origin, such as distance from the sea, elevation and local geology, and reveal when products have been adulterated, ingredients replaced with cheaper alternatives, or carry false label claims of being organic, free range or wild caught.

This allows the origin of foods to be quickly traced in the event of contamination or a disease outbreak, and verification of sustainability and ethical production practices

Food and fibre producers in particular can use isotope fingerprinting to enhance their traceability systems, protect their brands, and provide consumers with greater confidence in the authenticity, safety and origin of their products.

Isotope map of Australia made by CSIRO using data from Isotopes.au.

Isotopes.au unites data to strengthen food supply chains

Isotopes.au brings together data collected by four research agencies, including CSIRO, Geoscience Australia, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the National Measurement Institute, translating it into a common format.

This helps address the technical challenges of isotope analysis which is highly technical and relies on precise analytical instruments – usually only available to a handful of forensic laboratories – capable of measuring the mass of atoms.

“These forensic methods are 40 or 50 years old,” Nina said. “It’s not novel. The novelty is, how do you get it out of the lab and make something usable and accessible for producers? And given that the data we’re connecting has been paid for by taxpayers, we want to make it usable for those taxpayers. Let’s make the most of it.”

It’s already possible to track cotton, wool and meat back to the farm where it was produced.

And CSIRO assessments in 2017 and 2023 have verified that greenhouse gas emissions for Australian canola production meet European Union targets for biofuels, securing access to this lucrative market.

Nina said the Isotopes.au project was all about ensuring integrity and trust in assurance and food safety systems along the supply chain.

“We want to make the data accessible and demonstrate how decisions by producers are improving and impacting the world and environmental outcomes in a positive way, so that they get the value from those decisions and actions, and it’s reinforced,” she said.

“We’re really trying to democratise the trust in our food systems and make that part not premium. We don’t want to ‘premiumise’ trust, and that’s the point of our work here.”

What are the next steps?

While the data is not in a format suitable for immediate use by primary producers, Nina said it was being opened up so that people with “clever ideas” could use it as a foundation for developing their own tools for tracking products and providing provenance information.

In the next 18 months, she said the project team would focus on understanding user needs and potential applications. “It’s really at that startup level,” she said.

“It may merge with other platforms, but I think the legacy and the important part is that we’ve demonstrated how these organisations can make their data assets accessible and harmonised in a simple, user-friendly way, so that tools can be developed on top of them.”

Access to the data is free for research and academic purposes, and it will operate on a self-sustaining nonprofit model for commercial entities.

“At the moment, we’re wide open and looking for interest,” she said.

Nina spoke at the Isotopes.au launch on Day 1 of evokeAG. and demonstrated the platform on the CSIRO showcase stage on Day 2.

She also moderated a panel discussion, “Radical transparency: Rewiring the agrifood supply chain”, on Day 1, with Downforce Technologies founder Professor Jacqueline McGlade, Sundown Pastoral Company co-owner Danielle Statham, Coles general manager (meat, deli and seafood) Martin Smithson and Latitude 28 Produce and Orijin Plus co-founder James Williamson.

The Isotopes.au project received co-investment from the Australian Research Data Commons, which is funded by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy.

This article appeared at evokeAG